Ultrasound beamforming system and method with reconfigurable aperture

Abstract

An ultrasound imaging system beamforming method comprises reconfiguring the aperture at distinct beamforming instances by i) Increasing the number of channels forming the aperture at a beam forming instance while simultaneously decreasing the sampling rate with an increasing depth of focal point; ii) Increasing the number of array elements that are part of a composite element of a channel forming the aperture at a beam forming instance with an increasing depth of focal point, wherein a composite element is a plurality of individual array elements forming a single channel at a beam forming instance; and/or iii) Defining allowable delay error for each depth of focal point and selecting a base channel for each beamforming instance to form the aperture and selecting additional channels to form the aperture at the beam forming instance which have a delay error relative to the base channel less than the allowable delay error.